Distinguishing between the Boletus edulis and the Tylopilus felleus mushrooms
The Boletus edulis is a delicious, edible mushroom that there are lots of in most forests, and it is certainly one of my favorite mushrooms to harvest. However, there is one species of mushrooms that looks a lot like the Boletus edulis, and for beginners, distinguishing between these can seem difficult.
An image of the Boletus edulis, by @valth. This is a very small individual.
In this post I will teach you how to easily distinguish the Boletus edulis from the Tylopilus felleus mushrooms, so you can feel safe when harvesting these. Mixing them up is not a too big deal, because the Tylopilus felleus is not poisonous, but it tastes very bitter, and will ruin your food if you cook it.
An image of the Tylopilus felleus, by @valth. The cap is darker than this in nature, but the camera made it very bright.
When you are looking at these pictures, you might not think that they look very much alike, but when finding them in the nature, their colors might both be a bit closer to the other one, and knowing which one it is can be pretty difficult for a lot of people. These pictures highlight the unique properties of both these mushrooms, and most of the ones I find are not that typical of their species.
How to distinguish the mushrooms from each other
When you are looking at one of these mushrooms, you want to look at the upper part of the stem. Both of these have a net/web-like pattern on the stem, close to the cap. On the Boletus edulis this web will be white or whiteish. On the Tylopilus felleus this web-pattern will be brown, darkish or even purple. This is because the spores on the mushrooms have different colors, so the color you are seeing is actually the spores that have fallen off the cap, and were stuck on the stem.
This is a picture of the part of the mushrooms I am talking about. The Boletus edulis is at the top, and the Tylopilus felleus is at the bottom. Image by @valth.
I hope you understand what I am talking about when you are looking at the picture, and hopefully this will help you identifying them in the next mushroom season.
You could also do a taste test
Warning: This information is from collecting these in Norway. This might not be a good idea in other parts of the world, especially if you got any poisonous mushrooms that look like any of them, which we luckily don’t in Norway!
Now that the warning is written, a final tip is to just taste them. The Tylopilus felleus has an extremely bitter taste (unless you don’t have the gene that codes for the protein TAS2R38, which I want to write a post about later). If you taste it (and have the protein), the bitter taste will be very strong, so have some other food or liquid ready for consumption to get rid of the taste. I personally collect a few blueberries before tasting these, because they will be able to replace the taste in my mouth.
The Boletus edulis will not have this bitter taste, and will instead have a mild mushroom-taste that will taste pretty okay.
Mushroom Monday
Thanks for ready this post! It is part of #mushroom-Monday where I try to post about mushrooms each Monday. Feel free to join the #Mushroom-Monday project with a post of your own!
About the author
Hi, I’m @valth! I live in Norway with my pregnant girlfriend and our two dogs, one of which is seen wearing a bowtie in the profile picture!
I am very passionate about nature and biology, and have been studying ecology for a few years now. My passions are mostly within conservation biology, mycology (the studies of mushrooms), animal behavior and general microbiology. I really enjoy both the theoretical aspect, as well as the more practical aspect of biology, and I spend about as much time in front of biology textbooks as I do spend on finding and identifying plant, mushroom and animal species in the forests.
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Love mushrooms :)
wow... it, amazing
Hi valth than you for this nice post, which smells by forest.
Myself I need not bother to bend to distinguish between these two mushrooms. They are quite different.
Other problem is Boletus badius which is much more like Tylopilus felleus, but even thus 90 % can be solved just by one look.
The reason is easy. For me is Boletus badius main interest, because Boletus edulis is rare. Czech republic is not Norway. I have heard wild stories about mushrooms in Scandinavia. Here in the Czech republic almost everybody picks mushrooms.
Happy walking in forest to you!
That's a nice tip! How do you tell, when the mushrooms are younger and haven't opened up all the way? Do you taste a lot of mushrooms? Are the wildcrafted mushrooms for sale in your area pretty reliably identified? Have a great Mushroom Monday!
I think the web-like marking on the stem is usable at even smaller mushrooms. The one in my picture is actually very tiny, at a point where it is almost not worth bringing along (and rater come back for it later). I don't usually taste them to spot the difference, but I have tried it (mainly to check for my genetics in regards to the protein that allows most people to taste the bitterness in the Tylopilus felleus. Other than that, I don't really use taste for any identification, except for in Russula mushrooms.
Foraged mushrooms are very rarely for sale in my area, or in Norway at all. Most mushrooms for sale here are oysters or champignon, which are both very cheap. Those who enjoys mushrooms usually collect them by themselves, or buy it privately.
Thanks! I haven't seen any Russulas since I read your taste-testing tip, lol.
In most places I've lived, people just collected on their own. But here in the Pacific Northwest, there are so many commercial pickers and buyers. There are a lot of rules on the National Forests -- there used to be real territorial violence among people picking -- mostly for Matsutake mushrooms for the Japanese market. We see quite a variety of wild-crafted mushrooms in some grocery stores.
Are the Russulas even able to have mushrooms at this time of the year in the Pacific Northwest? If so, I envy the long season you have. Here they are gone for a few months already.
There is some territorial rivalry going on here as well, but it's mostly on a very small scale. I'm sad to admit that this is going on in my country, but most of the rivalry going on with mushroom picking here is tied to (mostly elderly people) who fight with immigrants over the best spots. Luckily we have great foraging laws here that allows anyone to pick any mushroom, even on private property. So it would be legal to go into a garden or a park to harvest them, as long as you don't bother the people who owns the place. So there should really not be any ground to fight over the right to pick the mushrooms, but some people get really territorial when someone finds their secret mushroom spot!
It is a good thing that many wild mushrooms are for salt at the grocery stores there. I really wish I would be able to buy some when I am unable to collect my own. However, I am kind of cheap, so I would probably not feel comfortable to spend premium money on buying mushrooms that I know I could get for free by going on a small walk to the forest ;)
I like looking at the mushrooms for sale at the stores. But I have never been able to spend my money on them. I just take my chances outdoors, on my own.
That's incredible about your foraging laws - really incredible! I would like that, lol! Some of the commercial pickers were immigrants, so that had something to do with the territorial disputes, too, I think. And when real money gets added in, watch out - especially in our gun-happy country.
There could be some Russula still, but more by the coast. My parents live in Arkansas, and they routinely have Russulas around in December. I should post some shots from last year....
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